Featured Research

Why living in the moment is impossible: Decision-making memories stored in mysterious brain area known to be involved with vision

Date:

August 9, 2012

Source:

University of Pittsburgh

Summary:

The sought-after equanimity of "living in the moment" may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who've pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior.

Share This

The sought-after equanimity of "living in the moment" may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who've pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior.

The sought-after equanimity of "living in the moment" may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who've pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior. The study, based on research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and published August 9 in the professional journal Neuron, is the first of its kind to analyze signals associated with metacognition -- a person's ability to monitor and control cognition (a term cleverly described by researchers as "thinking about thinking.")

Related Articles

"The brain has to keep track of decisions and the outcomes they produce," said Marc Sommer, who did his research for the study as a University of Pittsburgh neuroscience faculty member and is now on the faculty at Duke University. "You need that continuity of thought," Sommer continued. "We are constantly keeping decisions in mind as we move through life, thinking about other things. We guessed it was analogous to working memory, which would point toward the prefrontal cortex."

Sommer predicted that neuronal correlates of metacognition resided in the same brain areas responsible for cognition, including the frontal cortex -- a part of the brain linked with personality expression, decision making, and social behavior. Sommer worked with Paul G. Middlebrooks, who did his research for the study at Pitt before he received his Pitt PhD in neuroscience in 2011; Middlebrooks is now a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University. The research team studied single neurons in vivo in three frontal cortical regions of the brain: the frontal eye field (associated with visual attention and eye movements), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (responsible for motor planning, organization, and regulation), and the supplementary eye field (SEF) involved in the planning and control of saccadic eye movements, which are the extremely fast movements of the eye that allow it to continually refocus on an object.

To learn where metacognition occurs in the brain, subjects performed a visual decision-making task that involved random flashing lights and a dominant light on a cardboard square. Participants were asked to remember and pinpoint where the dominant light appeared, guessing whether they were correct. The researchers found that while neural activity correlated with decisions and guesses in all three brain areas, the putative metacognitive activity that linked decisions to bets resided exclusively in the SEF.

"The SEF is a complex area [of the brain] linked with motivational aspects of behavior," said Sommer. "If we think we're going to receive something good, neuronal activity tends to be high in SEF. People want good things in life, and to keep getting those good things, they have to compare what's going on now versus the decisions made in the past."

Sommer noted that defining such concepts related to metacognition, like consciousness, has been difficult for decades. He sees his research and future work related to studying metacognition as one step in a systematic process of working toward a better understanding of consciousness. By studying metacognition, he says, he reduces the big problem of studying a "train of thought" into a simpler component: examining how one cognitive process influences another.

"Why aren't our thoughts independent of each other? Why don't we just live in the moment? For a healthy person, it's impossible to live in the moment. It's a nice thing to say in terms of seizing the day and enjoying life, but our inner lives and experiences are much richer than that."

So far, patients with mental disorders have not been tested on these tasks, but Sommer is interested to see how SEF and other brain areas might be disrupted in these disorders.

"With schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, there is a fracturing of the thought process. It is constantly disrupted, and despite trying to keep a thought going, one is distracted very easily," Sommers said. "Patients with these disorders have trouble sustaining a memory of past decisions to guide later behavior, suggesting a problem with metacognition."

Funding for this research was provided by the University of Pittsburgh, the joint University of Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon University Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

University of Pittsburgh. "Why living in the moment is impossible: Decision-making memories stored in mysterious brain area known to be involved with vision." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 August 2012. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809141629.htm>.

University of Pittsburgh. (2012, August 9). Why living in the moment is impossible: Decision-making memories stored in mysterious brain area known to be involved with vision. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 31, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809141629.htm

University of Pittsburgh. "Why living in the moment is impossible: Decision-making memories stored in mysterious brain area known to be involved with vision." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809141629.htm (accessed March 31, 2015).

More From ScienceDaily

More Mind & Brain News

Featured Research

Mar. 31, 2015  Memory and as well as connections between brain cells were restored in mice with a model of Alzheimer's given an experimental cancer drug, researchers report. "With this treatment, cells under ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  A criminologist finds that solitary confinement does not deter inmates from committing further violence in prison. The prisoners in the study who received solitary confinement were no more -- or less ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  Alcoholism takes a toll on every aspect of a person's life, including skin problems. Now, a new research report helps explain why this happens and what might be done to address it. "The clinical ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  Human language likely developed quite rapidly into a sophisticated system, a linguist contends. Instead of mumbles and grunts, people deployed syntax and structures resembling the ones we use today, ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  Coronary heart disease and stroke, two of the leading causes of death in the United States, are diseases associated with heightened platelet reactivity. A new study in humans suggests an underlying ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  A new study had researchers seeking answers to why the therapeutic benefit afforded by SSRIs was so limited in children and teenagers. If researchers can uncover the biological mechanisms preventing ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  New research reveals high-quality early education is especially advantageous for children when they start younger and continue longer. Not only does more high-quality early education significantly ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  During prenatal development, the brains of most animals, including humans, develop specifically male or female characteristics. But scientists have known little about the details of how this ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015  A history of depression may put women at risk for developing diabetes during pregnancy, according to research. This study also pointed to how common depression is during pregnancy and the need for ... full story

Featured Videos

AAA: Distracted Driving a Serious Teen Problem

AP (Mar. 25, 2015)  While distracted driving is not a new problem for teens, new research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety says it&apos;s much more serious than previously thought. (March 25)
Video provided by AP

Many Don't Know They Have Alzheimer's, But Their Doctors Do

Newsy (Mar. 24, 2015)  According to a new study by the Alzheimer&apos;s Association, more than half of those who have the degenerative brain disease aren&apos;t told by their doctors.
Video provided by Newsy

A Quick 45-Minute Nap Can Improve Your Memory

Newsy (Mar. 23, 2015)  Researchers found those who napped for 45 minutes to an hour before being tested on information recalled it five times better than those who didn&apos;t.
Video provided by Newsy

Related Stories

Aug. 4, 2014  The happiness of over 18,000 people worldwide has been predicted by a mathematical equation, with results showing that moment-to-moment happiness reflects not just how well things are going, but ... full story

Feb. 5, 2014  Researchers have, for the first time, pinpointed areas of the brain -- the inferior lateral prefrontal cortex and frontopolar cortex -- that seem to serve as an "arbitrator" between two ... full story

May 16, 2013  In our interaction with our environment we constantly refer to past experiences stored as memories to guide behavioral decisions. But how memories are formed, stored and then retrieved to assist ... full story

Jan. 15, 2013  Neuroscientists have shown how decision-making processes are influenced by neurons. Whether in society or nature, decisions are often the result of complex interactions between many factors. Because ... full story

Nov. 26, 2012  An area of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for decisions made on the spur of the moment, but not those made based on prior experience or habit, according to a new study from ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.